“They’re not things, Doctor!”
“My name is Shifter, now.”
An irate tone came alongside the voice, the one emanating from behind the smiling clay mask. The heavily scarred and mutilated bald white head the back strap sat upon almost glowed under the fluorescent lights. Monitors flickered an ominous red from beneath the mask for a moment, washing across the skin and tan ceremonial armor.
“And the hell they aren’t just things like everything else in the multiverse. Thinking and feeling hardly precludes one from being designated as a new iteration of The Xex Project. Or any of my experiments, rituals, or projects. They’re pushing the boundaries of what it means to EXIST. Trendsetters! New models. They are things. Means to an end. They can go do whatever they want after that. Total autonomy as to their gifted purpose or not, as you very well know.”
“Your commission ended after X-2. You don’t even have a reason to be churning them out like this anymore!”
A long pause. The screens beneath the clay mask flickered.
“Pushing the limits of what science is capable of doesn’t really require a commission, does it? I pursue progress and knowledge at all costs, even more fervently since my off-brand immortality. Besides, Xex is still alive, isn’t he? The original purpose of the G.O.D. commission from way back in the 2040’s when we worked on X-0 together is still unfulfilled, regardless of whether I work for the Guardians of Destiny, or The Black Armada, or continue to operate Eclipse as a free agent however I see fit for the highest bidders.”
The dapper old gentleman in the pinstriped three piece black suit adjusted his bowler hat, flipping his walking cane with the other free hand to pull himself closer a few feet. Took a delicate moment of pause to cough up blood delicately into a blood-colored red pocket handkerchief as Shifter watched. The color was certainly intentional.
Nobody could expect the damage from a two millennia-old inherited case of Cystic Fibrosis with Tuberculosis complications to wait for immortals to finish bickering, of course.
“I could fix that little genetic hiccup for you, if you’d like. Although so could the Guardians as of centuries ago.”
“No.”
“Easy enough to do some quick gene splicing, factor in the ascension regeneration rates, and have the body produce secretions with the proper viscosities. I’ve already marketed such a thing for the transhumanist crowds. Although it seems the queer community has become the primary market demographic.”
“No.”
“Fine. Cough up blood for the rest of your immortal existence. Live with plugged orifices, raw passages, and damaged bronchial tubes. Let your scarred and popped Alveoli wither and heal a hundred times a day. The airways and lungs heal themselves as fast as you rip them back open with your hacking and hemorrhaging. So what do I care, anyways?”
Tarnos, the Former God of Death, now God Resistance Army Leader, hacked some more before he could speak.
“You care more than you let on. You know half of Central wouldn’t refer to them as ‘The X Project Siblings’ if it weren’t for your early ramblings about them being akin to your manufactured children. You wrote your own legacy – that one you hate. Mad Scientist indeed!”
A scoff, at that.
“Yes, when I was younger and dumber. Before I cracked Serania’s inferior ritual variant, improved it myself, and gifted myself my own immortality, your pathetic rendition of ‘ascended’ godhood. I even practiced shooting fire from my fingers for a little while afterwards, I’ll have you know. Sprouting bone spikes from my knuckles like you. And now you see what I was able to refine that into, no?”
He was referencing the fact that he was capable of feats involving spacetime, dark matter and energy, ghosts, hauntings, and other such occult, supernatural distortions of what most god-riddled organizations like the Guardians or Armada used.
“Shifter.”
Tarnos closed his eyes, steadied his breathing to fight off the coughing fit he could feel rising before he could continue. Each breath was ragged and uncomfortable, mostly now in the mornings before his ascended healing could catch up and provide him a semblance of normal life or godhood.
“You know this is only going to get worse with time. None of the Big Three are able to account for these wild cards anymore. For every X Project Sibling that joins The Resistance on and off, there are two more, off doing mercenary work willy-nilly for The Guardians of Destiny or The Black Armada at any given point in time. Some you’ve even clearly designed for mass-manufacture and sale due to confidence in the inability to reverse engineer them. Don’t you think six or seven was enough? How many more iterations are hidden away somewhere in hideaway Eclipse laboratories?”
Tarnos waved a hand, gesturing to something that wasn’t there. Managed to stifle a cough until after he had finished.
“What is this new one, anyways? Magnetic sand, scrap parts, and withered hearts of the dead? Really? Occult magic capable of warping time and space and spirit, that not even us immortals understand? Can you not see it from our perspective? You almost collapsed all of reality onto itself when you created Three, remember? How many lost lives does he carry inside him against his will? Trillions? You are as much a wildcard as your creations!”
The man in the smiling mask shifted in his chitinous plate armor, the screen behind the mask turning off completely and ending the pale white glow against the edge of the chin. Tarnos had garnered his full attention, which was extremely rare.
“Do you know why I didn’t stop after the debauchery of Ultimate? X2? Getting slashed to ribbons by my own genetic coded kin? That same unborn child who was stolen from us while my wife was used as leverage? Do you know why I continued working even after I realized who I was splicing? After it went wild and made me look like this?”
Tarnos paused, returned to sitting. Then he lifted his walking cane to rest against the side of his chin with the cap placed firmly between his legs on the chair. Leaned forward ever so slightly, tempted with curiosity by the most eccentric man in Central. He had already seen the mutilated face beneath the mask decades ago. Acid and razor sharp claws had done such a deed.
He could already see Shifter dancing along the edge of mania and self-righteousness.
He felt as old as he was, that odd two thousand plus years. Stopped to reflect on the mortal section of such a life, a Roman Legionnaires’ experiences percolating away in the background of a storied set of memories afterwards as an immortal – the former God of Death, now living in exile from both former lives. One… Already long gone. Still kept tabs on his spreading bloodline throughout history sometimes.
“Why?”
Another clicking of the tongue, coupled with derision wafting from the tan, chitin-armored man in waves.
“Because I know my wife wouldn’t have wanted her death to be for nothing, for starters. Hell, that’s true even if I wasn’t revolted by watching my only genetic child go galavant around Central, eating and asexually infection-breeding its way through the mortal and immortal population with that whole ‘eating power’ shtick. Secondly, science waits for no single person to lick their wounds and pull themselves back together. It grinds onwards, always!”
Tarnos sighed, opening his palm and gathering power in the center of it. It was an old technique by gods from long before his time, to center the self when you felt your mind wander. Swirling air molecules in a circle was hardly a show of powers, but it did help calm him somewhat – bringing him from a place of emotion back to a place of logic.
“Listen, we’ve finally started to stabilize our borders across the far edge of Guardian Territory around Petronova and some of the Neutral Territories. The Guardian Resistance Army is willing to pay you to come work for us and simply to cease your work on the latest X Project iteration. You can still explore the upper limits of science without needing to ruin any more lives, directly or indirectly. Maybe you could even save some of ours. You know all about our current reliance on drones and A.I. due to lacking volunteers, mercenaries, and professional soldiers.”
Shifter stood suddenly, slapping his hands on the metal table and denting the stainless steel surface ever so slightly. Tiny black specks were gathering near the impact, wafting to and from the chitin gauntlets. If he realized any of the dark matter or energy, the destruction would be immense, plentiful as it was across Central Universe since Three’s inception.
“No. I will not be constrained by The Resistance, just as I will not be constrained by The G.O.D. or The Black Armada. I will continue to push the limits of what existence can be in my own ways. Honestly Tarnos, just because some of my creations have expressed fatigue or disgust with their lot in life, never forget that they wouldn’t even have those experiences in the first place if not for my hard work. And One can thank you and Hephaestus just as equally as me for the opportunity!”
“Do you really think Venomous, Hope, Kala Nag, hell, even Peaches is truly happy?”
“I don’t give a fuck. I gave them life. I gave them freedom and power AND CHOICE! They can go complain to the Shocktrooper grunts wearing white or the Berserkers – poor bastards sitting in dirty trenches and dirty armor on the front lines of the two little empires. I’m sure poor little Jeremy from Greasy Knuckle or Joyce would LOVE to hear about how such powerful creatures are so eager to whine to rank and file grunts about their ability to choose outside the whims and realms of the immortals! I know I’d be all ears with a swarm of Seraphs or Harlequin Knights clambering over the top!”
Tarnos was quiet for a full minute as Shifter paced angrily back and forth, seething openly. Black motes danced in the air around the room, each a possibility of power, barely held in check by both Shifter’s emotions and the power Tarnos had coiled into a tornado at the base of his spine. It felt like trying to feed a hungry demon with scraps to keep it from eating you. Perhaps by now Shifter could even give Xex himself a run for his money in a one on one fight.
Shifter was, and had always been unpredictable, that was always the danger in meeting with him. Even small diplomatic talks or requests for his work could often lead to blowouts, or manic explosions. Whatever sources of power he had dabbled in since leaving the G.O.D. had affected his personality, not his genius.
Shifter eventually calmed himself, the black motes winking out of existence one by one as he regained composure and extinguished the motes of possibility.
“No, Tarnos. I will never stop. I cannot stop. Most of all, I don’t want to stop.”
He made a gesture, and a small holographic projection materialized on the tabletop.
A hulking figure constructed itself out of holographic fractals. It was easily a good ten feet tall upright if the jagged metal spine and back weren’t hunched over from the plethora of black sand, shrapnel, and other weapons systems comprising the form, as if sticking needles in silly putty. There was no face, only a shifting black sand exterior riddled with rusty metal in the vague shape of a head.
“This is Quicksand Unit 01. Xex Project, Iteration Fifteen. No, you may not know about the others in between. The project codename is ‘Colossus.’ You know whose withered, mummified heart is nestled away in the middle of this first prototype? The most powerful?”
Awkward silence at first. Tarnos already knew. He chose to tell a white lie to avoid an explosion.
“No, whose?”
“My wife.”
A longer, more uncomfortable pause.
“She should be resting in peace, should she not?”
“The fuck she should. Are we not entitled to anger? Or vengeance? To second chances at beautiful revenge?”
The hostility ramped up again, the black motes winking in and out across the space like little specks of void black dust floating in beams of sunlight.
“I won’t just bring her back in facsimile, Tarnos. Remember, the whole point of this project is to create creatures of such immense power and capability that they can kill our good friend Emperor Xex, who I’ll remind you devoured the fucking Creator. And as he’s walking around, shaking his balls and power to and fro like a mangy cunt, I’m going to kill multiple birds with multiple stones. Xex, his leadership, The Guardian High Council, all of it.”
Tarnos shifted uncomfortably in his seat, feeling his gathered power in the palm pulling towards the black motes of negative energy in the air in all directions, with hardly a twitch from Shifter.
The former Doctor’s current ability suite was well known by the ascended community to drain nearby powers to feed his own.
The danger wasn’t only in the damage he could do with a simple matter-antimatter detonation, of course, but in that power he could pull from ascended immortals to use against those same immortals. The more might he conjured with his powers, the hungrier that strange dark energy would become. Shifter felt, to Tarnos’ powers, more like a beast tamer holding back a hungry demon than a real immortal.
“You think I don’t know the risks, the ethics, the morality? You see Colossus as some perversion of a woman who is already dead. But these Quicksand units are just another dream, wished into a physical form. Ghosts given a second chance in an immaculate haunting. A gift to Central Universe. The hope in walking physical form, that perhaps one day the fucking tyranny and oppression can END.”
The black motes pulled into Shifter’s beige armor carapace and disappeared. The lights stopped the wanton flickering they had been performing rather erratically as electrical power ceased being sapped out of them passively. Somehow, he had drunk it all within.
“You see my research and development as a hassle. As a barrier to your little freedom fighters beating up the two big bad guys and what…. Freeing the people into true, technology-driven direct Democracy? You can’t be so naive as to think you stand half a chance against two factions of immortals with centuries old support networks and brainwashed histories. Leave the work of killing tyrants to us clever! Only reason your little ragtag band hasn’t been ripped apart already is simply due to how much time and energy The Black Armada and The G.O.D. spends in trying to kill each other. You’re like gnats pawing at the toes of true power!”
Tarnos sighed. This was a common refrain across the more sympathetic immortal communities and networks in the past little while. Both The Guardians and The Armada had kept their fight and existence as rebels hidden from their central populations, despite hearty pirate broadcasting from across the Neutral Territories and outer colonies. Much was simply hand waved away as conspiracy theory.
“You could help us change that!”
Another coughing fit.
“And I will. For the right cost. Maybe sometimes it’ll be your money, as if I ever truly needed it. Sometimes it will be safe refuge for my researchers and staff. Sometimes it’ll be a favor. Hell, sometimes I’ll ask for sacrifices as your assigned cost, just to remind you who truly holds the strings of the Central Universe in his hands. I know my creations will likely volunteer for such a tribute to avoid anyone else from being harmed, of course. Then I’ll get to see how far your little rebel cells will really go for their ideals.”
Tarnos could tell there was a scowling look of victory on the masked face beneath, even through the simple cheery tan caricature of a happy face. Took the second or two to reflect back to the unblemished, unscarred face of the Doctor as he once was, before he was rendered grotesque, and disfigured by his own unborn child, held hostage against him.
He closed his eyes for a moment to remember the long-flowing blonde hair, the friendly, unfiltered brogue, the jokes and whimsy of a man that simply no longer existed. The man who was, before this armored chitin shell, a husk of a man wielding power and knowledge beyond even the various faction gods, yet fixated only on progress for sake of progress.
Obsessed with the idealism of “doing the job yourself if you want it done right.”
Power for the sake of power. A scientist trying to prove a point.
“If you’re so capable, Shifter… You offered to fix me… Why haven’t you fixed your own scars?”
Tarnos pointed his cane brazenly at the mazework of white slash-marks, acid burns, and deep disfiguring gouges across the entirety of Shifter’s face, skull, and scalp. They poked into visibility around the brown and black leather and foam mask straps that held the false face in place. The damage ranged across 95% of his body, Tarnos knew.
“They’re a reminder. Help me remember why I still work.”
“And how many monsters will be enough for you, Dr. Frankenstein?”
“I’ll know when I know. We’ll all know. Certain tyrannical monsters will be dead!”
He slapped the table in jest, the jovial madness coming back with a crazed cackle. It was oddly a welcome reprieve from the dark anger simmering throughout the undertones of the conversation. Shifter’s unpredictability of emotion across the entire spectrum, as if unable to settle in one place for very long.
“Until then? I reject your request! Should you need to speak with me again, Tarnos, bring more than mere money. I don’t need money. I have more money than anybody else in The Central Universe. I can make infinite money by feeding the gods my scraps. Or… Send me Ultimate, so I can end one problem for good, and upgrade my personal armor with more sentimental adornings simultaneously than just these from the first time I flayed it.”
Tarnos shook his head sadly, then paused to eject another gentle cough of heavily blood-flecked phlegm into his red handkerchief. Nobody had a clue where Xex Project Two, that called itself “Ultimate,” was hiding.
“Maybe one day we’ll see eye to eye. I miss what we had when we worked on X-1 together, Doctor. I confess I still miss that older you in my heart.”
The man in the beige armor stood, emitting that same cold and calculating aura that burbled beneath all other emotions and personalities.
“My name is Shifter. And the man you’re referring to, be it by honorific or codename, has been dead for decades. Fuck him, fuck The X Project Siblings, and fuck you, Tarnos. Politely.”
The man in the rune-etched beige carapace armor strode from the room, reactivating the screen inside the mask. Tarnos was left sitting alone at the dented stainless steel table, feeling like he had failed even more utterly than he had expected to, going in.
He repeated himself:
“They’re not things, Shifter. They’re people.”
A hacking single cough, then:
“They’re fucking people.”
